Late Bloomers | Telescope Film
Late Bloomers

Late Bloomers

Critic Rating

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Late Bloomers stars Isabella Rossellini and William Hurt as a married couple pulled apart by the threat of old age. Each reacts in a different way: Hurt’s distinguished architect chases after his glory days, while Rossellini’s housewife installs handrails about the house.

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What are critics saying?

75

New York Post by Lou Lumenick

Moves at a poky pace even by American indie standards. But it's worth checking out for the fine cast, which also includes Joanna Lumley as Rossellini's earthy pal, and scene-stealing Doreen Mantle as her tart-tongued but wise mother.

70

Salon by Andrew O'Hehir

An entertaining diversion, mostly because Rossellini and Hurt are a pair of seasoned and graceful pros who know how to work every line and every gesture, and it's great to see them playing characters who are exactly their age.

67

The A.V. Club

As a portrait of aging, Late Bloomers is a little too easy, but its cast makes it worth a look, even so.

63

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

An uneven but touching comedy with a cheery score that sounds too much like whistling on the way past the graveyard.

60

NPR by Mark Jenkins

The protagonists of Late Bloomers have a problem, but it's not that they're getting older. Their dilemma is that they're reacting so differently to aging.

60

Village Voice by Michael Atkinson

She (Rossellini) is radiant in a profoundly ordinary and believable way, as always, and stirs up generational pathos all by herself.

50

The New York Times by Stephen Holden

As more characters, including the couple's three children - enter the picture, Late Bloomers loses its narrative thread and becomes so choppy that you have the sense that it was butchered during the editing process. What remains is the skeleton of a story that leads to an abrupt, icky-cute ending.

40

New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman

Though Hurt and Rossellini make a warmly believable couple, they can't overcome the film's biggest drawback: Gavras' own awkward attitude toward aging.

40

Variety

While the world could certainly use more films about characters entering their sunset years, a solution as toothless and saggy as Julie Gavras' Late Bloomers does little to help the cause.

20

Time Out by Keith Uhlich

Hurt tries on an English accent as if he were in the Walmart changing room and a splendid-in-theory supporting cast - Simon Callow, Joanna Lumley, Arta Dobroshi - either ham it up or make moony eyes. Extra discredit to the embarrassingly jaunty score by Sodi Marciszewer, which should be taken behind the recording studio and shot.